The end of the world as we know it

University last week indicate that the Internet played a key role in the planning, coverage and, ultimately, the in-depth analysis of the incident which left 32 people dead. E-Brief News reports that Seung-Hui Cho reportedly used the Web to purchase some of his ammunition. And when he carried out his mission, he ensured that the Internet would carry his garbled reasoning to the widest possible audience by sending his video footage to NBC News. The Taipei Times reports that it was mass murder for the YouTube generation, a chilling document from a man who said little in life but clearly wanted people to know his grievances in death. AustralianIT reports that Seung-Hui apparently purchased empty ammunition clips over the eBay Internet auction site. \'My understanding was there were some clips or some magazine cartridges that might have been purchased electronically,\' Virginia\'s Attorney-General, Bob McDonnell, said. eBay spokesperson Catherine England said the company’s privacy rules prohibited public disclosure of a customer\'s purchases, but said media reports about Seung-Hui buying clips on the site appeared \'fairly accurate\'. Full Taipei Times report Full AustralianIT report

For a few days last week, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, served as an essential news source for hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet trying to understand the shootings. The New York Times compares this \'chaotic non-structure\' platform to a newspaper with more than 2 000 writers, researchers and copy editors, yet no supervisors or managers to speak of. From the contributions of 2 074 editors, at last count, the site created a polished, detailed article on the massacre, with more than 140 separate footnotes, as well as sidebars that profiled the shooter and gave a timeline of the attacks. According to the foundation that runs the various Wikipedias around the world, there were more than 750 000 visits to the main article on the shootings in its first two days, an average of four visits a second. Even The Roanoke Times, which is published near Blacksburg, where the university is located, noted that Wikipedia ‘has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event.’ Recently, Wikipedia had been the object of much controversy over the reliability of its articles, and the frequent anonymity of its contributors. But during some recent critical events, like the Virginia Tech killings, the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, and the London bombings in 2005, the site has been transformed from an ever-growing reference book into a ever-updating news source — albeit one with scant original reporting. Full report in The New York Times

Less than 36 hours after the worst shooting spree in US history, scammers had already created fraudulent charity sites. According to a Personal Computer World report, the Sans Internet Storm Center is warning of at least 25 new domain names related to the shootings. Sites such as vatechshooting.com and vtmassacre.com have been registered, but no content has been uploaded. The US Computer Emergency Response Team (US-Cert) warned users to be wary of charity sites that solicit donations through e-mail, as the sites may in fact be fronts for scams and possibly even identity theft rings. Full Personal Computer World report